Get rid of the voting

This isn't reddit. Voting systems optimize for shitty content. They add nothing. I'm sick of comments about votes, or shitty "Edit: wow 5 downvotes? Really?" comments. I'm sick of expanding every hidden comment because you never know if someone is being buried just because they have a dissenting (but valid) opinion. Comment voting systems are shit. Don't be shit, Ars.

Me too. If I had my way, that sort of meta-discussion would be banned.

iamaelephant wrote:

I'm sick of expanding every hidden comment because you never know if someone is being buried just because they have a dissenting (but valid) opinion.

Then subscribe, and you can view the comments through the forum interface, with no voting, highlighting, or other fancy distractions.

iamaelephant wrote:

Comment voting systems are shit. Don't be shit, Ars.

I'd say Ars Technica's system is one of the least shit I've seen in a while. Partly because Aurich and Ken are very open and communicative about the design and direction. Partly because I can, as a subscriber, opt not to use it.

The voting system on Ars allows me to quickly pick out the higher quality posts when I don't have the time or the interest to properly read a thread.

No, it allows you to quickly pick out the popular posts. These don't necessarily coincide with the quality posts. Voting systems generate echo chambers in which only the popular opinion is allowable. Just take a quick look at that shit-hole Reddit to see what happens when you optimize for popularity in a comment section.

nimro wrote:

Me too. If I had my way, that sort of meta-discussion would be banned.

Instant permanent ban for any discussion about votes, predictions of votes or vote-whoring. Absolutely. But at that stage you may as well just remove the voting system.

nimro wrote:

I'd say Ars Technica's system is one of the least shit I've seen in a while.

Agreed. I'd like to see it stay that way, but comment voting systems ALWAYS generate shitty content. Always. I have never seen an exception to this rule. If you keep the voting system you will eventually generate an echo chamber. Comment quality WILL decrease. Of this I am certain.

Everyone is welcome to their own opinions, and they're welcome to post them here, provided they don't clog up every single related topic with it.

It is ours that things have improved markedly, we're very happy about it, and there is no chance of wanting to go back. That doesn't mean it's done or perfect, because it's certainly isn't, but definitely a source of genuine progress.

We're very happy with the results voting is giving us. We aren't done tweaking it, but we have zero intention to go back to without it, things are markedly improved already.

No, they're not.

Oddly enough, I think this is the exact sort of post that the voting helps with- not a criticism of you, but it adds no information to the dialogue so not reading these (as well as the delusional fan boy ones) is a real benefit. Yes we lose some good posts due to bias, but hopefully this can be improved over time.

As was pointed out, Ars goes both ways. (Hoos will be so excited) I have never seen the voting in comments as I use the forum view, not the 'front page' view (Obligatory "Ars has a front page?" It does, I see it when I am at other computers)

While I can't comment on how well voting works, I can assure you, if you don't like it, you can come over to the dark subscriber side.

We're very happy with the results voting is giving us. We aren't done tweaking it, but we have zero intention to go back to without it, things are markedly improved already.

No, they're not.

Oddly enough, I think this is the exact sort of post that the voting helps with- not a criticism of you, but it adds no information to the dialogue so not reading these (as well as the delusional fan boy ones) is a real benefit.

I don't think you have been paying attention to the voting trends. These kinds of short statements that contribute nothing to the discussion actually get the MOST votes, provided that people agree with them. If the point of the voting system was to discourage this kind of commenting, it has failed.

As was pointed out, Ars goes both ways. (Hoos will be so excited) I have never seen the voting in comments as I use the forum view, not the 'front page' view (Obligatory "Ars has a front page?" It does, I see it when I am at other computers)

While I can't comment on how well voting works, I can assure you, if you don't like it, you can come over to the dark subscriber side.

Oddly, enough I am excited.

Primarily because the news subforum is still there.

While I understand Ars' point of view and that I am just a guest here, it's not an interface I care for or care for using. Visually, the front page commenting section just doesn't work well for me. And that's not a comment on design, it's a physical reaction - I get a headachey fatigue when I read it (not with the articles, just with the comment section). Additionally, I have no interest in voting on anyone's posts and, if possible, have even less interest in my posts being voted upon.

As a subscriptor, I have a choice (and choice can be exciting) and I appreciate that.

Hide the voting numbers, simple as that. Mob voting is annoying, people allow their opinions to be influenced by voting numbers and will downvote dissenting opinions simply because others did. Keep the hidden posts at 20 votes possibly even, just hide the damn numbers. I've already noticed an influx of "witty" comments that contribute next to nothing that is highly prevalent on reddit, honestly Ars comments I used to come and try to learn from what others had to say, but slowly its turning into reddit comment section. If Ars starts sorting comments by most votes, well then its basically done at that point. I basically would have no reason to even view the comments anymore, it would be full fledged reddit comments. It'd practically be the same as if I just started posting Ars articles to reddit and then discussing them in reddit's comment section.

iamaelephant, just accept that the comments system isn't for people like you and me, and stop checking the comments all together.That way you don't get to suffer the mob mentality and variations of "we all think alike. aren't we great" mentality that these systems bring with them.Problem solved.

Then go enjoy the forum, where people having different views and opinions doesn't have to be a negative thing.

I came to this subforum expecting a topic like this, and I was not disappointed.

I remember the discussions before the voting system was in place, and I'd like to think my posts contributed in some small way to the thought that went into the voting system. At the time, I thought it was a good idea. I've since changed my mind.

The problem is, if you post about Android or Apple, Apple or Samsung, Microsoft or Sony, Microsoft or Apple, etc., the other side will downvote you, regardless of the quality of your comment. I'm not talking about myself -- far be it for me to say what my own comments are worth. It's just a trend I'm seeing. You can go into a news story and all the up and down votes tell me is what percentage of Ars readers are fans of Brand A and what percentage of Ars readers are fans of Brand B.

Sounds like Facebook to me. Apple is collecting Likes (upvotes), Samsung is, Android is, etc., etc. How does this help us? Maybe for selling ad space? This information could tell you that there are more Windows users than Mac users (maybe) and more iPhone users than Android users (maybe) and you could use that to sell ad space. I suppose.

With regards to the comparisons to Reddit, I'm actually a fan of the site. I haven't seen Reddit at its worst, but I've heard stories. I have seen some very cool things up there. It's all in what subs you subscribe to. Intelligent conversation and OC (original content) is very much frowned upon. For the latter, I have an easy solution that would solve the problem almost overnight. I guess I'm a smart guy, but if I've thought of it, I'm sure Reddit has as well. They have a reason for not doing it. Probably money (ads). Like movie remakes, reposts are popular. They drive traffic. So do witty comments and puns, over intelligent discourse. Anyway, Ars isn't pushing popular posts to the top. I also have yet to see the kind of crowdsourced censorship that takes place at Reddit.

But between the comments now being a brand popularity contest and the new layout (which is not bad, just a little different) I find myself reading the front page less and less, and commenting on front page stories almost never.

My suggestion: Downvoting does nothing. I personally don't care what the average Ars reader doesn't like. We all have things we don't like. I am not a big fan of Apple for various reasons, but how does this benefit anyone? It doesn't. So allowing me to go downvoting anything not hating Apple doesn't add one bit of good to the site, does it? Surely not. Crowdsourced censorship is wrong, but Ars doesn't seem to be going there. So why have downvotes at all? And to make sure only good posts get the upvotes, give everyone five a day, non-replenishing. If someone wants to upvote everyone who shares their obsession with a particular brand, they certainly won't get them all, and they can waste their five. But I think that would encourage users to instead apply them to the five best posts they've read that day.

But between the comments now being a brand popularity contest and the new layout (which is not bad, just a little different) I find myself reading the front page less and less, and commenting on front page stories almost never.

And I'm the complete opposite. I'm reading the comments much more now thanks to the voting (prior to that I'd just given up entirely), and I've actually turned off the view-comments-on-the-forum view because I want to have the downvoted and idiotic comments hidden.

Just to reiterate what I've said before, the voting has zero to do with selling ad space, or anything of the sort.

Oh, I apologize then -- I did not see that. I was only throwing a guess out there, not accusing or trying to contradict anyone. I was just brainstorming with "what purpose could this possibly serve" (that is, the trend of voting by brand rather than quality of post).

The purpose it serves is to pull the comments out of the gutter. Yes, Apple/Samsung posts are full of downvotes. They were also previously absolute sewers in terms of discourse, so that's not really all that shocking.

From our perspective, while voting isn't perfect (and we acknowledge that readily) it's made a serious, visible improvement, and we're very pleased by that, even if we're not resting on our laurels.

Fair enough -- your house, your rules. I won't say, as the OP has, that "you need" to get rid of the voting -- that's your call, and the calls you guys have made, over the years, have largely been for the best.

I realized earlier that my opinion on the voting can be summed up in one simple idea: The voting discourages intelligent conversation. I can make a great post, but if I'm a Mac guy or a PC guy, the other side is going to spam me with downvotes, not because I'm wrong, but because I'm right, and my post is threatens their message. And that's a problem. Before, you had to actually answer back, or ignore the post, and a good post could stand on its own. Now if a group of people get together and spam the "opposing team's" posts, people will see the downvotes and not even read it. So you can "take out" a post without logic, without reason, and without any recourse. Sure, it doesn't hide it, but it makes it look bad. I suppose you could force each down-voter to write a brief explanation why they voted it down, and if *that* is voted down, their vote is rescinded... but that's a little too meta, and you don't want it to be about the votes, you want it to be about the conversation.

Not that it was much better before the votes. Before the votes, I had to weigh the effort required to formulate a quality response against the likelihood, which was pretty high, that those who disagreed would simply ignore it, and choose to respond to posts easier to discredit. But, that's the nature of a forum, I guess. With the voting, bringing down the quality of conversation is as simple as clicking one button. There's no responsibility, no accountability, and it's anonymous on top of that. While it could be said that the community-driven, democratic voting system (everyone gets one vote per post -- up, abstain, or down) favors the posts the community wants to see, it could also be said that only the posts which offend the fewest people and stay "safe" in everyone's book will get read.

And I haven't got anything better. I wish I did. I've been using forums for about 13-14 years now, and I've got nothing. Guess you really can't fix stupid (trolls and detractors, not y'all/your site). But on a lighter note, the "Promoted post(s)" the writers select to go at the end of the article, on the other hand, is a great feature.

At the end of the day what we have is a public forum, where anyone can post. Short of being some kind of serious post nazis we're just going to have to live with the fact that intelligent discourse is always going to be surrounded by some level of noise. The question we're looking at is this: is the noise level better after voting? The answer is clearly yes. That doesn't magically translate into intelligent discourse, we're just trying to lower the noise surrounding it. So you have to be careful correlating the two, the second part takes more time to cultivate.

I honestly only ever see truly 'problematic' voting in one place: platform contention stories (Apple vs Samsung legal ones being the king probably). And as I said before, the comments on those stories have been mostly garbage. Lowering the noise can't expose signal if there wasn't one there to begin with. We're still contemplating changes though, not saying the staus quo is good enough yet.

I know it's not going to happen, but just shut off comments when there's an article about smartphone platforms

The thing I see with voting is that it encourages to appeal to popularity. A witty comment easily gets more upvotes than a substantial one that's boring for most people. We'll see how it turns out, but I think this has the tendency to introduce another kind of noise and is not beneficial to the signal.

I already threw my cents in for that topic earlier in some comment thread for a comment voting article.Just, please, keep an eye on what attracts upvotes. I agree things have gotten better, but Aurich's comment about the laurels is spot on.

P.S.: I'm not against having fun. The comment thread for the recent Viagra news was one of those that I enjoyed most.

I'm not seeing anything like reddit though, where people are trying to get upvotes by being clever. No more than before at least, and frankly some of the lamer humor attempts get pretty viciously downvoted.

Oddly enough, I think this is the exact sort of post that the voting helps with- not a criticism of you, but it adds no information to the dialogue

He provided as much backing information for his thesis that things have not markedly improved as Aurich provided for his thesis that things have markedly improved.

Quote:

The thing I see with voting is that it encourages to appeal to popularity. A witty comment easily gets more upvotes than a substantial one that's boring for most people.

Doubly so for news posts. They are very time-sensitive, especially on popular topics. A witty response on page 1 is going to get more responses than a measured response - started at the same time - that lands on page 4. Even more-so if the prior three pages are a wasteland of witty responses and noise. I don't care how many posts are hidden because of downvotes, I'm still not getting to page 4 when the comments are crap all the way down.

As such, I'm only seeing what voting takes away, not that it adds anything.

Yep, voting doesn't solve the problem of highlighting good content in its current form and good stuff rots on the pages 2+.And I personally feel like there is a tendency to squeeze in comments that don't hold much content but are a broad outline of the general opinion. Often the ones after the first just paraphrase it. Of course because most people agree they get upvotes but aren't worth much to the discussion.

I'm not seeing anything like reddit though, where people are trying to get upvotes by being clever. No more than before at least, and frankly some of the lamer humor attempts get pretty viciously downvoted.

No? http://i.imgur.com/ep3RP.png Because I see stupid memes being "upvoted" and people being "downvoted" for questions something that may not be factual in an article. If you ask me, that's a pretty good likeness to a lot of the content on Reddit. Also, we can't reply to someone who has been overly downvoted? So you are making the call on whether or not I should continue conversation with an individual based on a biased voting system? You guys are like a broken democracy anymore and it's sad..

I'm not seeing anything like reddit though, where people are trying to get upvotes by being clever. No more than before at least, and frankly some of the lamer humor attempts get pretty viciously downvoted.

No? http://i.imgur.com/ep3RP.png Because I see stupid memes being "upvoted" and people being "downvoted" for questions something that may not be factual in an article. If you ask me, that's a pretty good likeness to a lot of the content on Reddit. Also, we can't reply to someone who has been overly downvoted? So you are making the call on whether or not I should continue conversation with an individual based on a biased voting system? You guys are like a broken democracy anymore and it's sad..

In the case you linked, the meme was entirely topical and relevant (though could have done with a spoiler tag). The downvoted post below it was not adding to the discussion in any way.

The idea (AFAIK) of removing the quote button from heavily downvoted posts is to discourage repetition of unappreciated posts (usually trolling). If you really want, you can quote the post manually with [quote] tags.

I agree with the criticism of the meme upvoting. I saw that and had a laugh. But I did not vote up as this is not what I want to encourage in discussions. Jokes and one liners come on their own. And I'm totally fine with some here and there if they're as good as this one.But yeah, some well places meme usage shouldn't be more popular than a post adding substance.

The post "questioning something factual in the article" I couldn't find on your linked pic. There's only one comment generically questioning the quality of the whole article without providing any basis.THIS is the stupid crap that deserves its downvotes and does better when hidden away with no quote button.

I hope you only picked that as a falsely downvoted example because it was handily available on the same screenshot and you were too lazy to find a real example...

I'm not seeing anything like reddit though, where people are trying to get upvotes by being clever. No more than before at least, and frankly some of the lamer humor attempts get pretty viciously downvoted.

No? http://i.imgur.com/ep3RP.png Because I see stupid memes being "upvoted" and people being "downvoted" for questions something that may not be factual in an article. If you ask me, that's a pretty good likeness to a lot of the content on Reddit.

To be fair, Aurich stipulated "No more than before, at least", which is why I agree with him there. Ars has always had snarky comments and memes in comments. They're a minority but they have always been there.

However, I think your picture shows how worthless the voting really is. If that's the most upvoted comment (it's at least among them) then that isn't helpful at all. This isn't Reddit, where your cumulative upvote score allows you to place content higher than those with a lower score, so what is even the point of upvoting content that adds nothing to a discussion? To offset downvotes because it amuses you, sure, but to give it more than a few? There's no point to it.

A meme was upvoted. And life goes on, it's hardly a big deal. The internet is flooded with them, it's not reasonable to think they'll never show up at Ars. If they were they bulk of posts it would be an issue, and we'd deal with it, but they're not, and it's not a concern right now.

A shitty comment was downvoted. No, you can't lazy quote it with a button. Good, it was a worthless comment, not worth replying to. There is nothing you could quote from that post that would elevate the conversation. Seeing trash like that collapsed makes me happy, I hope that person is disappointed and thinks more about their next post, but that might be hoping for too much. I know for a fact some people are thinking that way though, which is great.

Nothing from that example is at all convincing as far as showing a problem.

A meme was upvoted. And life goes on, it's hardly a big deal. The internet is flooded with them, it's not reasonable to think they'll never show up at Ars. If the were they bulk of posts it would be an issue, and we'd deal with it, but they're not, and it's not a concern right now.

A shitty comment was downvoted. No, you can't lazy quote it with a button. Good, it was a worthless comment, not worth replying to. There is nothing you could quote from that post that would elevate the conversation. Seeing trash like that collapsed makes me happy, I hope that person is disappointed and thinks more about their next post, but that might be hoping for too much. I know for a fact some people are thinking that way though, which is great.

Nothing from that example is at all convincing as far as showing a problem.

Yes, a meme was upvote and life does indeed go on. But I think you may be intentionally missing the point. Your voting system (And by yours I mean Reddit) is going to encourage that kind of crap and we will become some stupid subreddit. A comment was downvoted and it was "shitty" in the sense that he didn't back it up with any information. However, you are biased as he was in your eyes attacking the integrity of an article and it's author. I question which reason you choose to downvote him for, lack of a source? or publicly shaming an article for having information that may be wrong?

None the less, you give someone a handful of downvotes or upvotes and people are like sheep and will just follow suite. And it would be MY call as far as who I feel like replying to. I know that you are following orders and that my discontent for the way things are heading here, But yet here I am, replying to you.. In that particular case, my reply would be to ask him for a source as he wasn't the only one who called the article out and got downvoted. I think you should re-iterate your stance and say that "Nothing from that example is at all convincing as far as showing a problem, as we are no longer and never were considering the removal of the voting system as the higher ups wanted garbage content and greater page hits"

A comment was downvoted and it was "shitty" in the sense that he didn't back it up with any information. However, you are biased as he was in your eyes attacking the integrity of an article and it's author. I question which reason you choose to downvote him for, lack of a source? or publicly shaming an article for having information that may be wrong?

Actually, I found the article the comments are from rather bad. The 5GB firmware size figure with no more info backing the number up or explaining how it may vary had me scratch my head.

Still, Aurich is spot on calling this comment shitty and trash and I have a hard time seeing his negative attitude as being the result of any bias in this case.Bias and a lack of neutrality does not automatically mean that every opinion is flawed or wrong or that it is a deciding factor in every opinion.

As I'm rather critical towards the voting system as it is myself, I want to thank you very much for making it so easy for the staff to associate negative opinions towards the voting systems, especially with regard to the upvoting of substance free posts, with the kind of fatalism, accusations and corporate money and power conspiracy theories you throw at it. I am absolutely positive arguing on this level is especially prone to get heard and considered as it obviously relies on a factual, empirical basis and is worded in an appropriate and diplomatic way.

However, you are biased as he was in your eyes attacking the integrity of an article and it's author. I question which reason you choose to downvote him for, lack of a source? or publicly shaming an article for having information that may be wrong?

Slow your roll, Maverick. "We" don't downvote—or, rather, "we" (where we == Ars folks) get one downvote per comment, just like everybody else. I don't have a hidden "Nuclear Downvote" button when I'm viewing comments; I get the same up and down arrows everyone else gets. Even Ken only has one upvote or one downvote per comment.

What you're seeing isn't censorship, but rather the community self-correcting. Saying that "ARS" just posts random Internet rumors as fact is in fact a shitty comment. It's rude. Further, it doesn't offer anything of substance--it doesn't cite a source, or offer evidence that contradicts the article, or even really "shame" anybody. It's just a guy waving his arms and herp-derping. The community--not the staff, but the other forum members--voted it down because it's a worthless comment.

Criticisms of Ars don't get downvotes, but posts that lack substance or are rude typically do. If the poster had said something worth hearing, like perhaps a rebuttal or criticism with some substance, then it would likely have received positive votes instead.

The comment system is working exactly as intended. Jerks are being muted. If you want to criticize, do it politely, or at least do it with some substance. A post made with the intent of "publicly shaming" an article author is going to get downvoted by the community because that's an asshole thing to do, and people don't like reading asshole'ish comments.

None the less, you give someone a handful of downvotes or upvotes and people are like sheep and will just follow suite.

I think part of the problem is that they don't have just a handful. It's not like XDA where you only get eight Thanks a day (and they don't roll over). I wonder, if we only had so many downvotes, would we waste them, or would we use them on the truly worst comments? (Upvotes don't matter since Ars doesn't sort by upvotes or vote ratio.)

Pokrface wrote:

What you're seeing isn't censorship, but rather the community self-correcting. Saying that "ARS" just posts random Internet rumors as fact is in fact a shitty comment. It's rude. Further, it doesn't offer anything of substance--it doesn't cite a source, or offer evidence that contradicts the article, or even really "shame" anybody. It's just a guy waving his arms and herp-derping. The community--not the staff, but the other forum members--voted it down because it's a worthless comment.

What you call correct, someone who disagrees with you calls censorship.

At least the comment had the wherewithal to actually write a post, and use words. It's rude, yes, but they're at least doing the forum thing right, just not in a way you or I agree with. By simply downvoting them, you're worse. Either use your words and correct them, or if they are truly not replying to... do not reply to them.

Censorship or correction, however you want to call it, is not the job or responsibility of the users. That's the staff's job. Allowing the users to band together to censor comments they don't like makes the staff look lazy, in my opinion. Reddit is different -- Reddit is community driven top to bottom.

There is nothing "correct" about downvoting here, whether passive or organized.

Also, I used to criticize people for saying "ARS", since that would imply it's an acronym. I'd ask what it stands for. Nobody has an answer. Now, one has occurred to me: Another Reddit Sub (or Site).

What you call correct, someone who disagrees with you calls censorship.

"Censorship" is almost always the first cry of someone who has their posts moderated.

Quote:

At least the comment had the wherewithal to actually write a post, and use words. It's rude, yes, but they're at least doing the forum thing right, just not in a way you or I agree with. By simply downvoting them, you're worse. Either use your words and correct them, or if they are truly not replying to... do not reply to them.

Emphasis added. You appear to be proceeding from demonstrably false assumption that people can be swayed by logic or reason. Not every post has substance, and not every post is worth replying to. What possible purpose can be served by replying to someone who has just posted something like "LOL ANDROID SUCKS GET A IPHONE"?

Quote:

Censorship or correction, however you want to call it, is not the job or responsibility of the users. That's the staff's job.

Totally disagree. The community is shaped by the users and their thoughts drive the conversation. Up and downvoting give the conversation's participants, in aggregate, the ability to keep things on track, and it's working exactly as intended.

Yes, a meme was upvote and life does indeed go on. But I think you may be intentionally missing the point. Your voting system (And by yours I mean Reddit) is going to encourage that kind of crap and we will become some stupid subreddit.

The thing is, you can assert that all you like, but there's actually no evidence that it's happening. If you could demonstrate a statistically significant increase in meme posts over the last month I'd be more than open to looking at the data. But honestly I doubt anyone, reader or staff, reads more comments than I do, across all kinds of stories, and I don't see it.

The fact of the matter is reddit uses a different system than we do. We share the concepts of up and down votes, but that's about it. And that matters, because to become like reddit you truly have to use a system more akin to theirs. And we really have zero interest in doing such a thing.

Still, Aurich is spot on calling this comment shitty and trash and I have a hard time seeing his negative attitude as being the result of any bias in this case.Bias and a lack of neutrality does not automatically mean that every opinion is flawed or wrong or that it is a deciding factor in every opinion.

Right, to be clear I couldn't care less if someone criticizes our coverage, provided that they do so with substance. If the comment is the equivalent of "lol this article sucks" then yeah, please, downvote away and let's hope that person either learns to write a proper criticism or goes away.

There's is no magical "all comments are equal" principle at play here. We don't feel the need to honor the fact that you can type words and press 'submit'. This isn't the land of special snowflakes, where we coo over little Johnny learning how to make a post. If your comment is crap then I'm glad to see it vanish beneath the waves. No straw man cries of "censorship!" are going to make us feel different about that, any more than the people who trot out some tired "free speech" argument. We're not a government, and if you can't meet our standards then you can get cut and go play with some other team.

Is the voting system perfect? No, not at all. The examples in this thread haven't been good ones, sorry, but that doesn't mean I don't see posts that I don't think should have been downvoted. We'll continue to tune things, but the overall takeaway is that the tradeoffs have been more than worth the benefits in the overall scheme of things. We can't imagine going back now.

What you call correct, someone who disagrees with you calls censorship.

"Censorship" is almost always the first cry of someone who has their posts moderated.

Then we are in agreement. It's always subjective. If you run a site and somebody disagrees with you, you have the right to censor them.

Pokrface wrote:

Quote:

At least the comment had the wherewithal to actually write a post, and use words. It's rude, yes, but they're at least doing the forum thing right, just not in a way you or I agree with. By simply downvoting them, you're worse. Either use your words and correct them, or if they are truly not replying to... do not reply to them.

Emphasis added. You appear to be proceeding from demonstrably false assumption that people can be swayed by logic or reason. Not every post has substance, and not every post is worth replying to. What possible purpose can be served by replying to someone who has just posted something like "LOL ANDROID SUCKS GET A IPHONE"?

Again I agree, pointing to what I said after your emphasis. It used to be, we'd ignore people like that. Then ignore features were added to forums. I always thought they were worthless and never used them, but that's beside the point. Now we can make it so another user's posts are hidden to others. I believe that is wrong. Just ignore them and move on.

Pokrface wrote:

Quote:

Censorship or correction, however you want to call it, is not the job or responsibility of the users. That's the staff's job.

Totally disagree. The community is shaped by the users and their thoughts drive the conversation. Up and downvoting give the conversation's participants, in aggregate, the ability to keep things on track, and it's working exactly as intended.

I agree with the first part of your statement. It's a good idea, but to borrow your phrase you used before, you appear to be proceeding from the demonstrably false assumption that the collective Ars community is only upvoting posts that contribute meaningful discussion to the topic presented in the article. And as I have said, I do not believe that to be the case. In addition to helpful posts, I believe witty posts are being upvoted, and in addition to worthless posts, I think people are downvoting bias shown toward brands they don't like. And that takes away from the discussion, when we can censor (or correct, or moderate, however you want to frame it) posts that contribute to the discussion, but show one brand or the people who choose that brand as superior to another or show the people who choose that brand as reasonable, to the offense of those who prefer and/or choose another brand. And I see that a lot, and it goes both ways in every single turf war I've seen.